A question I have explored for years, personally and professionally, is this: do feelings come from thoughts or do thoughts come from feelings? Or does it work both ways, with thoughts and feelings both prompting a response from the other?

An online friend wrote and put forth the widely upheld argument that thoughts come from feelings. He said, “You (may) … feel an intense surge of depression or you (might) begin to laugh – these states are not caused by thinking they are emotional communications that override any thoughts.”

For a long time I shared a similar logic. I agreed with such evidence as my friend presented when he said, “You see a spider/snake/lion and you feel fear – instantly – there is no thinking about it.”

That sort of logic made sense to me for a long time.

In more recent years, however, my thinking has shifted. As a result of experimenting with the idea that feelings cause our thoughts, I have concluded the opposite; it is thoughts that determine our feelings.

In John 1:1 we read, “In the beginning was the Word.” What is a word, if not spoken thought? In the beginning there is thought, which is the mental energy that generates an electromagnetic energy field that makes all manifestation possible. In other words, thought creates the energetic pattern, or basic structure that brings the thought into form. Thought comes first.

Here’s how it works:

We adopt a set of beliefs from the thoughts we think. These beliefs coalesce into a story about life (And believe me, we have stories about everything!). For example: we may have a story that spiders/snakes/lions are dangerous. Perhaps that story comes from s program we saw on TV about a lions attack, or perhaps we once saw our dad kill a rattlesnake, or maybe we remember hearing our mother scream when she saw a spider once and, as a result, we have a story in our minds about that particular animal being dangerous. Of course, if, and when we encounter that animal our story about it is triggered in our memory, and we react accordingly. This all happens automatically according to the following formula: Thoughts believed generate feelings that prompt behavior. WE DON’T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT. The energetic imprint is already in place!

Actually, we now know that this thought/feeling imprint becomes a neural pathway in the brain! After all, what is a neural pathway, but the process of thinking the same old thoughts, feeling the same old feelings, and reacting in the same old ways, over and over again? This repetition creates a literal “wrinkle” in our brain that becomes our default position: one that can be triggered at any point in the neural loop.

Any outside event, like smelling a particular scent, or seeing something familiar, or the way something feels, can trigger the neural loop and off we go into our deeply embedded “core” pattern of thinking, feeling, and reacting, which produces the same predictable outcome every time. It is an automatic happening.

What’s more, in recent times, Epigenetics has discovered that our genes change according to our thoughts! This implies that our DNA is capable of being changed. Uploaded with new information, our genes re-inform our DNA, and suddenly we are completely changed – from the inside out! This finding also implies that our belief system is contained within our DNA and is passed on to our lineage. So when we clear our beliefs, we change our DNA which, in turn changes future generations.

It has even been conjectured that, because the DNA is timeless … changes in its structure not only affect future generations but also members of our bloodline already born! Clearing our beliefs then becomes the way we “cleanse our bloodline” from destructive beliefs and replace them with more life-giving ones instead.

I believe that the mind is the creator – always. The first by-product of the mind is thought, When the thought becomes a belief, it sets up an emotional energy field that informs our behavior. (Think of the mind as a generator that cranks out emotional energy in the form of feelings.) When we encounter someone/something that triggers one of our stories or beliefs, we automatically feel the feelings that go with that story/belief and we behave accordingly.

References:

“Why Your DNA May Not Be Your Destiny”: http://www.livescience.com/37135-dna-epigenetics-disease-research.html

“Falling For This Myth Could Give You Cancer“: by Dr. Mercola: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/04/11/epigenetic-vs-determinism.aspx

My daily practice is my morning hook-up with the Universe and with the Living Intelligence that continues to enlighten and heal me. For instance, a couple of mornings ago, I went to my studio feeling physically low. I had been dealing with a head cold and body aches for a couple of days and now the cough was moving into my chest. I hadn’t slept well the night before, and was feeling rough in general.

As usual, I started my practice by setting my intention through prayer, and then I began to slowly stretch, opening the body and, at the same time, monitoring the incessant mind-talk. There seemed to be more low-frequency, negative chatter than normal that morning. I realized I was running a lot of mental noise about my health and what it meant that I was sick. (Having dealt with liver disease for several years, I tend to jump into mental worse-case scenarios about my health anytime I feel physically out of sorts.) To aid in clearing my mind, I started questioning some of the negative thoughts I was telling myself using Byron Katie’s “Four Questions and Turn Arounds.”

Suddenly, while standing in fully aligned Tadasana, with my arms lifted up to the heavens – I had the absolute conviction that complete healing was immediately available for me in that very moment. All I needed to do to realize it, I suddenly knew, was to BELIEVE it. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Universal Source knows no limits – there is nothing that could possibly limit its power and I also knew that the only thing that could keep me from receiving full healing was my own lack of belief. For one split second I chose to BELIEVE. I felt my body resonating with absolute knowing that I am loved by a Source that can, and would heal me.

I felt the energy charge through me, the way I imagine electric current must feel when it moves through something, and I knew I had received healing. And then, just as quickly, I felt some degree of limiting belief return. (It seems, so far, that I can only hold onto that total belief for a few seconds at a time.) But it was enough. I felt the difference in my body immediately. The head and body ache was gone. The cough was gone and has not returned. My energy was restored to normal. It was nothing short of amazing! I would even say miraculous – except that the definition of a miracle requires not knowing how it happened – I, however, felt like I did know how it happened.

I knew that my ability to receive the healing jolt of life energy that restored my health was due to my cooperative allowance of it. It was my ability to believe in it. I saw plainly through that experience that the only thing that stands between me and the total abundance of life through Source is the degree to which I hold on to disbelief; the disbelief created by limiting stories I believe without questioning.

I pray that Source will heal my unbelief, and yours – if it be as much your heart’s desire as it is my own.

When we hold beliefs that leave us doubting that we can have what we want, we create feelings of separation within us. We set ourselves apart from the world of abundance with an expectation of lack, scarcity, thwarted dreams and goals. The result is a harvest of outcomes that validate the limitation we believe in and expect.

If we believe, for instance, that someone is mistreating us, we immediately withdraw from, judge, condemn, and/or negate that person.

“Of course!” you say, “who wouldn’t? If someone mistreats me, it’s only natural that I would pull away.”

True enough. There are certain situations that require physical distance, especially from someone who appears to be hell-bent on destruction.

Nonetheless, the question begs to be asked, “How does my reaction, founded on an expectation of abuse, perpetuate the abuse cycle? In other words, “What is my part in this situation?”

Upon investigation, we may recognize certain feelings are generated that go along with the thought, “I am being mistreated.” Such a belief prompts feelings of distrust and paranoia. Believing it, we not only feel alienated from others, but we feel alienated from our selves, our essential loving nature, and Source.

How do you think such negative feelings, of paranoia and distrust, influences our reaction towards the person we accuse of mistreating us? Does our behavior when we believe the thought reinforce, even perpetuate the abuse?

I know you’re probably thinking, “But Lynne, the reason I am paranoid and distrustful of that person is because of my past experience with them! They have earned my paranoia & distrust!”

Possibly. Except for one thing. And that is the reminder of a universal principle that teaches,

“The world is always, and only, a mirror. There are no accidents, no mistakes, no coincidences. What we experience in our lives can only reflect our innermost dynamics.”

In other words, the belief comes first – always. What we encounter in our lives, the people and every situation we experience, can only be a mirror image of what we believe.

The good news is that the solution is always simple. It is always the same answer, no matter the problem. The answer is that we must change our mind by challenging the belief. When we address the problem at belief level we are tackling it at it’s point of origin. Dealing with the root belief causes the external problem to disappear.

If so, then you are in good company. Probably everyone you know does the same thing. As humans, we are story makers. We see a person or situation and we immediately create a story about what we see. That’s because the human mind is not satisfied unless it has an explanation of things we encounter in life.

I think the need to know may be intrinsically linked with our need for safety. In other words, we feel safer when we think we understand something; even if it’s an explanation that causes great distress. We prefer our own made up and painful story about reality over a state of ‘not knowing.’

We just need to feel like we know. Therefore we explain everything to ourselves in an ongoing mental dialog with ourselves. But the thing is – sometimes (often, for many of us) our mental chats with ourselves, so chock-full of unquestioned “explanations” about what we see, are simply not true!

But once we have an explanation, we just assume that it’s true. We believe these stories, boy, do we ever BELIEVE them! We believe our stories so completely sometimes that we hang on to them with our teeth bared, ready to bite anyone who disagrees!

Let’s take the picture above as a hypothetical, but nonetheless, commonplace sort of example:

I asked Susanna what her impressions of this picture were. She expressed immediate concern for the young boy in the photo who was “obviously (in her mind) being forced to work.” She launched into an animated diatribe about child slave labor and how unjust it is for business owners to take such unfair advantage of children in poverty situations. She expressed bitterness towards those who would mistreat such “poor, underprivileged, children.”

Doreen’s impressions were quite opposite; looking at the same picture brought her a reminiscent smile. She said the young boy’s facial expression brought back childhood memories for her of hanging out in her grandfather’s store on days she would have preferred to be outside playing. She went on to say how lucky she felt to have been a part of a family who worked in a business together. “It gave me a sense of importance and meaning to know that my family depended on me to do my part.”

Jillian had yet another take on the photo. She saw the children as waiting patiently for their parents to finish their day. She felt a little miffed at the parents for not having their children “home doing their schoolwork,” and at the same time, impressed with how patient “children from other cultures are as compared to our own.”

The point is – we all have a different story about what we see and experience. This is simply the way we are. We see and experience something and we create a story about it. Consciousness comes from observing what we see and the stories that arise about those things without getting too attached to our particular explanations about them. Because who knows, our story just might not be true!